Term 1 2026 at Mount Maunganui Intermediate School Gardens

Term 1 of 2026 has been a great success for our students. With a new school year ahead of us, our focus this term was all about giving our returning year 8 and our new year 7 intermediate gardeners real ownership over their outdoor classroom.

Allocating the Garden Beds

At Mount Intermediate, unlike at our primary schools, we allocate specific garden beds directly to different student groups and classes.  We find that our older learners here appreciate having more ownership of their gardens.  Each group is completely responsible for planning, planting, weeding, and caring for their own designated bed. They can harvest from their beds to take produce home.  Instead of just working on one huge communal garden, this setup gives our students a space to call their own. The students loved choosing their areas and deciding what to grow over the months ahead. It has been wonderful to see the friendly competition and pride starting to bloom across the different plots!  We also have shared garden beds, and often use produce from this area to prep food to share.

To get the beds ready for action, the students jumped right into pulling out summer weeds and clearing the dirt. Right on cue, we received a delivery of rich organic compost from Te Puke Landscaping Supplies. (Thanks LJ!) The students did the heavy lifting, adding the fresh compost to top up the soil so our crops would have the best possible start. 

Planting Out and Experimenting

Once the soil was fed, it was time to fill the spaces. We brought out strong young seedlings that we had been raising in our school shade house and carefully planted them into the ground. We also direct-sowed fresh seeds into the warm earth. In  school gardens we practice organic methods, so rather than nice neat lines of the same veg and black exposed soil in between, we plant different veg together (to confuse the pests and keep the soil happy), we try to cover as much of the soil as possible with either mulch or companion flowering plants.  This ensures that it stays moist and keeps the weeds down, while attracting beneficial insects to pollinate our fruit and veg.

We love trying new things in the garden, so we set up a few fun experiments this term. First, we sowed carrot seeds into hollowed out cylinders, filled with seed raising mix, in a giant tub of sand.  We wanted to see if the loose texture would help them grow perfectly straight. We also set up a cosy lettuce bed underneath our protective cold frame and mulched the soil with silage to keep it warm and damp. The experiment was a massive success! We are already harvesting heaps of crisp lettuce leaves. Miss Barr has been picking them fresh every week to use in the lunch rolls for our equity school lunches.  Not sure yet about the carrots … watch this space! 

Seed Saving and Harvesting along the way

In term one, it’s a great time to save seeds, as they have been drying on the plants during the summer. We had some big sunflower heads (and had taken special care NOT to plant F1 varieties, which don’t produce seed that can be gathered) so we spent a morning picking seeds out of them once they had dried. One Wednesday, we harvested apples from our tree.  A delicious crispy snack to share in the gardens.  The gardeners also enjoyed taking home bags of greens, gherkins, bok choy, zucchini, spring onions and herbs, whenever there are some ready to take.

Creative Signs and Herb Propagation

Our garden plots got a creative upgrade thanks to some handy recycling. We used salvaged wood from old pallets and testpots of paint donated by Resene, to paint colorful signs for individual beds. The gardeners personalized them with their own text and art using paint pens. The garden looks brighter and more organized now!

We also spent time learning how to multiply our plants and preserve our harvests. Daeyeon carefully picked small, fragrant posies of sage and hung them upside down in the garden shed. They are drying out nicely for students to take them home to use in the kitchen. Finally, the students learned how to divide our established sage, mint, and chive plants, splitting them at the roots to create more plants to share with other PIPS schools. Our students love how we pool resources and are excited about sharing what they grow with their fellow gardeners in other PIPS schools.

Cold Frames, and Equity Lunches

Once the beds were fed and leveled, it was time to fill the empty spaces with new life. We shifted our focus to our school shade house, where we had been raising strong, healthy young seedlings. The students carefully transplanted the seedlings into the fresh compost. We also direct-sowed winter seeds straight into the warm earth.

We have continued with our dedicated lettuce bed in the cold frame Brendon built for us last term. To keep the young lettuce plants warm and to stop them from drying out, we mulched the entire bed with a thick layer of silage. This setup worked like magic! The environment inside the cold frame was so perfect that the lettuces grew at lightning speed. We are already harvesting heaps of crisp, giant lettuce leaves. Miss Barr picks leaves of lettuce every week, using our very own organic greens to pack into the lunch rolls for our equity school lunches. The students can feel proud that the food they plant is directly feeding their peers at lunchtime.

Carrot Experiments

Intermediate gardeners love to experiment, so we put our problem-solving skills to the test this term. In one corner of the garden, we set up a peculiar new project: we sowed carrot seeds into a giant tub filled entirely with sand instead of regular soil. We hollowed out cylinders in the sand and filled each one with seed-raising mix, before planting a carrot seed on the top of each one. This is a special garden experiment to see if the loose, stone-free texture of the sand will allow the carrots to push downward easily and grow perfectly straight without splitting. We will be checking on them daily to see how our sand-grown carrots compare to the curly carrots we have grown in the regular beds in the past!

An early finish to Term 1

Unfortunately, due to an unexpected loss of funding, the gardening programme came to an unexpected halt before the end of the term. While it was deeply disappointing to pause our hands-on lessons early, we are incredibly proud of the work the tamariki did before we finished. We got together for our last lunchtime in the gardens and harvested what we could.  Students took home amazing produce ; zucchini rampicante (in all sorts of shapes), butternut squash, crown pumpkin, bags of herbs, kumara and greens, to share with their families. Their beautiful signs, thriving lettuce frames, and clever experiments stand as proof of their hard work. We are keeping our fingers crossed for a swift return to the soil so our young growers can get back to doing what they love!